Is your system up to snuff?

Activision caught a few gamers off guard when it posted minimum system requirements on Steam for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Specifically, the 6GB of RAM and 55GB of hard drive space seemed like steep requirements just to meet the minimum. Ready for some good news? You won't need any additional storage space to meet Activision's recommended system requirements for CoD: Advanced Warfare. However, you will need a well equipped machine.

Activision Blizzard has another lucrative franchise on its hands

Though some early reviews have criticized Destiny for its repetitive game play and vague storyline, it's still raking in a lot of money for publisher Activision Blizzard. Citing Chart-Track figures, Activision Blizzard says Destiny has sold through more than $325 million worldwide in its first five days, which underscores that it's the best selling new video game franchise launch of all time.

As subscribers flee, subscription pricing goes up

Gravity ensures that most of what goes up must also come down (even that helium filled balloon will return to Earth one day, minus the helium inside), but when it comes to World of Warcraft, the world's most popular MMORPG, the opposite is true. That's to say that hot on the heels of Blizzard Activision announcing that WoW's number of subscribers have gone down, the price of a subscription is going up.

While it’s difficult to compare the widely differing architectures of consoles, PC’s, and phones, most experts agree we have almost reached hardware parity. Activision is the latest “expert” to chime in on the debate, and claim that by the time next-generation of smartphones hit the market, they will indeed have the equivalent amount of raw graphical grunt as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. This has the company looking long and hard at its 30-year portfolio of more than 350 IP’s to see what would work well in the mobile space. Vice President of mobile development, Greg Canessa met with the guys over at CVG, and detailed what they have in store for the future.

Those of you rocking Team CoD t-shirts rather than Team Battlefield gear, you'll be pleased to know that Activision is getting ready to release Call of Duty: Black Ops II. We know this not because of a rumor or whispers in the wind, but because an official pre-order page by Activision popped up in the U.K. advertising that the upcoming game will start shipping November 13, 2012.

If you're an old school PC gamer, a quick way to get depressed is to head over to your local GameStop or Babbages and browse the PC section. The lone rack (at best) is a far cry from the days of shelves lining stores like Software Etc.* with PC titles, but that doesn't mean the platform is dead, Steam and other digital platforms have change the way PC gamers shop, and it's the reason Activision Blizzard's digital sales are at an all time high.

Prototype's main character has a whole slew of off-the-wall abilities in his superpowered arsenal, and now it's time to add another to the list: super-snubbing PC gamers. While console players get to tentacle-stab hearts to their heart's content starting April 24, we're now stuck on the sidelines until July 24 for no apparent reason. Granted, if you've been even the slightest bit conscious for the past few years, this is in no way a surprising slap to PC gamers' faces. Usually, though, this is Ubisoft's shtick, so it's not exactly uplifting to see Activision – the world's biggest videogame publisher – taking a similarly ill-advised approach. Developer Radical Entertainment's promising more details “soon,” though, so maybe a perfectly rational explanation is on the way. You know, like... er, well, ummmm. A time travel experiment gone horribly wrong? Yeah, we've got nothing.

Outside of death and taxes, both of which you can cheat, there are very few guarantees in life. One of them is that there will be another Call of Duty game. We can say this with absolute certainty because Activision Publishing would be foolish to kill its record breaking cash cow, especially after Modern Warfare 3 just became the only entertainment property to eclipse Avatar's 17-day $1 billion sales record.

It's a brave new PC gaming world, and -- to be perfectly honest -- we're pretty OK with it. PC Gamer's been examining Steam's graphs through the unfaltering lens of scrutiny, and it's discovered a back-and-forth, Balrog-worthy battle between Modern Warfare and its fiercest natural rival: Terraria. Wait, what? Well, for one thing, Battlefield 3's not actually on Steam, but even still, this is pretty impressive. MW3 and Terraria have spent the past week nearly neck-and-neck for second place (Skyrim's got first, of course) on Steam's most-played list, with both peaking at around the 55,000-60,000 concurrent player range. Granted, the Minecraft-influenced 2D platformer's riding a nice boost from its massive 1.1 update, but that does little to dull the sheen on this accomplishment. After all, Terraria's running on word-of-mouth, while MW3 has one of the biggest ad budgets in gaming history. David and Goliath, we believe you just got upstaged.

You know, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick might be just a teensy bit biased against Star Wars: The Old Republic. Let's see: Biggest rag-tag rebel threat to his sister company's MMO empire? Check. Coming from a company against which he's locked in a life-and-death struggle for triple-A supremacy? Check. A company that recently snatched half of his biggest moneymaker right out from under his nose? Check and check. All that aside, however, he does make a pretty solid point.